Google Photo Sphere Camera App Hits iOS Market

In Google’s ongoing efforts to prove it plays well with others, its once-exclusive “Photo Sphere” app has officially hit the iOS market. Previously only available on the Android platform, Photo Sphere stretches the limits of panoramic picture taking by enabling users to capture full 360-degree snapshots.

The application works simply, capturing frame-by-frame recording of the image by guiding the user to align their smartphone viewfinder with a floating blue dot. Once complete, the app stitches the individual frames together to produce a smooth, fully rotatable, interactive image.

While Photo Sphere isn’t the first tool iOS users can use to take 360-degree photographs, it does officially throw open the doors for shutterbugs of the Apple bent to geo tag and share their images on Google Maps, as well as Google’s rapidly growing Views gallery. Images are also easily sharable across a wide variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and (needless to say) Google+.